A Review of Kuhnian and Lakatosian “Explanations” in Economics

Given the greater popularity of Lakatosian views, one can find much more
applications of Lakatos’ views in economic literature. Such applications took place in two
different areas in economics. The first is related with the various schools or realms of
thought in economics and the other with specific economic theories. We shall present such
attempts in the following pages starting from the schools of economic thought.

It is widely accepted that the first application of Lakatos’ ideas to economics can be
found in S. Latsis’ (1976) work. Latsis identified hard core propositions and positive
heuristics in the scientific programme of neoclassical economics. Similarly, Remenyi (1979)
extended Latsis’ work by introducing much more specific characteristics of the hard core and
by providing additional positive heuristics. The traditional schools of economic thought have
also been identified as Lakatosian SRP. For instance, O’Brien (1976, pp. 107-9) thinks that
the Lakatosian programme fits rather well with the Smithian SRP, having a hard core and
positive heuristics, although it was eventually proved a degenerating one. Similarly, R. Fisher
(1986) discusses the marginalist school from the viewpoint of a Lakatosian research
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programme. ⁴

Blaug (1975, pp. 400, 412-4) explores Lakatos’ ideas in relation to the history of
economic thought arguing that the Keynesian research programme is a real Lakatosian
one. He also uses the Lakatosian framework for explaining the quick and wide acceptance
of Keynesian ideas. ⁵ Hands (1985) by counter-arguing that the Keynesian programme is
not progressive in the strict sense of Lakatos, forced Blaug to respond and to show (1990)
that such a programme is rather progressive since such a program could predict some
novel facts (Blaug, 1990, pp. 97, 101; 1991, pp. 503-4).⁶ In the same spirit, Lipsey (1981)
argued that Keynesian macroeconomics is still a progressive research programme which
provides strong predictions with good track record.

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